Spouse’s Love - Sibling’s Love - Children’s Love - FFWPU USA National Small Group Series - Realms of True Love: Connect Groups

Table of Contents Spouse’s Love Reading Discussion Questions Sibling’s Love Reading Discussion Questions Children’s Love Reading Discussion Questions

Spouse’s Love

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 3: True Love Chapter 2: The Realms of True Love

Section 3: The Love of Husband and Wife

Sacrifice goes hand in hand with love. The way of love flows downward, making sacrifices. This makes everything smooth. Without sacrifice, everything is thrown out of balance. It is the same for what we call conjugal love, which is the working of the heart that provides balance in the family. If you move alone and independently, problems arise. But as love grows bigger, it spills over to fill even the lowest places. Thus even people living in a slum can nurture the dream of love. They can say, “Since we came here out of our search for love, happiness is right here,” and they will want to settle and live there. Through conjugal love we experience God’s love.

You need to go through the love of husband and wife in order to establish the four-position foundation. Only then can you experience the heart of children and the heart of parents. Man is the male or yang image of God, and woman is the female or yin image of God. A married couple is like heaven and earth wrapped up together in a cloth. Therefore they can feel the heart of God’s ideal love. The four position foundation is the cornerstone of the kingdom of heaven on earth and in heaven. One individual cannot establish the kingdom of heaven by him or herself.

Loving one another as brothers and sisters sets up the foundation for conjugal love. This path restores three types of love that God had no opportunity to experience: sibling love, conjugal love and children’s love. When you harmonize these three types of love in your family, you can

give and receive God’s love. Within the family we strive to realize God’s ideal of creation. This is the cosmos-centered thought of the Unification Church.

On the way of restoration, as we couples work for the sake of the original world, we should always feel the heart and ideal that God felt at the time of the Creation. Consumed with that feeling, we should risk our lives as we proceed along this path with a heart of gratitude, willing only one thing. From now on, this is the course by which blessed families will realize the purpose of creation. It may cause us suffering, but that is not the intention. God asks us to go this way so we may receive the even more bountiful blessings He has stored up for us. To know this evokes immense gratitude. We couples who were brought together through heart and love are called to build with that love. We are to build a family that goes beyond the realm of daily life. That family should go beyond life itself and be one with God’s purpose. Otherwise we cannot return to God’s dwelling place, the kingdom of heaven. This is the purpose of creation, so we have to move toward making such families.

Nowadays people tend to be self-centered, thinking, “As long as I’m fine, everything is okay.” But now is the time to discard egoism and share our love with everyone around us. The family is the place for this. A happy family is one in which the husband comes home after work, discusses with his wife everything that happened to him during the day, and plans new projects together with her. A happy family is one that strives together to discover new things. When parents set such an example, the children want to contribute too; they will participate gladly in making such a family.

The place of conjugal love is the flower of the whole universe. A wife is a composite of all people in the museum of human history. She is the flower of her entire lineage. God is present on her wedding night. After waiting throughout history, finally God can settle in the joyful place of a man and woman’s love. How awesome is this place! She must think, “I have the role to open the way, to reconnect the broken path and to explode in love as a perfect minus, where this has never been done before.” From here, the bright sun of love rises above heaven and earth. When a man enters his wife’s room, he should do so as the embodiment of love and of the ideal.

Spouse’s Love - Discussion Questions

Pick ONE question to share with your group. Each person shares for 3 minutes.

1. What’s something you admire about True Parents’ relationship with each other as husband and wife? 2. What are some steps you could take to deepen your relationship with your spouse? 3. What’s something from the reading that you’d like to practice in your daily life? How would you do that? 4. What’s something you appreciate about your spouse and why?

Sibling’s Love

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 3: True Love Chapter 2: The Realms of True Love

Section 5: Love among Brothers and Sisters

Why do we need brothers and sisters? It is so that a brother, by looking at his younger and elder sisters, can understand, “Oh, that’s how our mother was as she grew up!” Through them he sees the process of his mother growing up. Also, a sister observes carefully how her elder or younger brother grows up to understand how her father grew up and lived. This is the love among siblings; you become one by growing up like this. That’s the value of loving your brothers and sisters. The love of brothers and sisters is the model for loving all people.

The relationship of brothers and sisters is connected to both the vertical and horizontal planes. If we say the relationship between Adam and Eve is horizontal, then that between God and Adam and Eve is vertical. East and west form only a horizontal line. This is why two linear dimensions that form a plane are necessary. And then the front-back aspect gives the required third dimension. Only the love between brothers and sisters expands the love of the family to a new dimension. Only through adding that love can a sphere of love come into being. That ideal sphere represents the highest standard of hope for men and women. The sons and daughters in substance are the embodiment of the love God hoped for at the time of creation. These sons and daughters will be able to inherit heaven and earth and the love that represents God. These sons and daughters grow up as brothers and sisters, and they mature. When these children

grow up, they have to find their father and mother, and the father and mother have to find their sons and daughters. Through this encounter, they become complete. This is the principle of counterparts.

In the world, normal circumstances do not bring about unforgettable love between friends. You cannot forget the friend who protected you or even risked his life for you in a crisis. No matter what may come, you can’t forget him. If you have such a friend, you will tell your children. You will write in your will that you are leaving something for him when you die. This is your duty toward your friend and benefactor. No one can interfere in this deep connection and relationship.

The desire for harmony and unity with God, the desire to praise Him, the desire for equality in the world, the desire for all humankind to live in prosperity and peace originate not in the body but in the mind. The wish in our original heart of goodness is not malice or enmity toward one another; it is not bloody struggle, fighting and killing each other. Instead our heart of goodness wants to live in freedom, peace and happiness, loving one another as brothers and sisters. This is the hope of all humankind.

Discussion Questions

Pick ONE question to share with your group. Each person shares for 3 minutes.

● What’s an experience that brought you closer to one of your siblings or a friend? ● What are some family traditions that could encourage siblings’ love? ● What helps you see other people as your brother or sister? ● What’s something from the reading that you’d like to practice in your daily life? How would you do that?

Children’s Love Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 3: True Love Chapter 2: The Realms of True Love

Section 4: Children’s Love

As participants in parental love and conjugal love, children are born with the highest authority. In other words, children emerge from that unchanging, unified love and share the nature of that love. This is why, no matter what they do, nothing can sever the parent-child relationship. Since children have the subject-nature of their parents’ love and life, cutting off that relationship would mean the parents are denying their own existence. Parents are unable to deny the results of their love. This is why parents will sacrifice their lives for their children. This is very logical.

It is from our parents’ love that we were born. We were born from the love of our mother and father. Before life and lineage comes love, so it is through love that our life and lineage are connected to our parents. Why is person-hood so precious? It is not just because the person has life, but also because the person participated in his or her parents’ love. It is their parents who loved, but the person is the fruit of their love. The one who is born as both the beginning and the result is not the mother or father; it is a new person. That’s why each person is precious.

Our children enable us to experience deeply the heart of God, the subject partner who created the entire universe through love. Our children are born through us, through our motivation, but by having and loving them we come to realize, “Yes, this is how God loves people.” Once you

have your own children, without anyone teaching you, you realize the importance of filial piety towards your parents.”

You have to return the love your parents gave you. When parents are raising their children, they don’t worry about their own hunger. If there is something to eat, they will hold their hungry stomach, keep a stiff upper lip and give that food to their children. By the nature of love, children will return such love to their parents. After the parents have gone the way of love, the children go the same way to comfort their parents. It begins with your heart to comfort your parents. Then your sons and daughters will become such sons and daughters to you. You need such sons and daughters in order for people of a good blood lineage to continue. You cannot become a filial child if you center your life on yourself and neglect your parents.

What kind of person can we call a filial child? The son who treats his parents as they treated him is a filial son. A filial son moves Heaven. Even though parents devote themselves to raising their children, if the children don’t care about their parents, that family will go to ruin. In order to gain a return on their investment, they need to establish an objective standard based on the principle of giving and receiving. When that happens for the first time, God will come and dwell in that place and the kingdom of heaven will be realized. What kind of children can reside in the kingdom of heaven? They are those who pay the debt of parental love on their own. When their parents become old and senile, the sons and daughters should endure the difficulties of their care without feeling it is difficult. They should possess the same heart their parents had toward them when they were little, cleaning up their urine and feces. This is what it means to be children of filial piety.

Discussion Questions

Pick ONE question to share with your group. Each person shares for 3 minutes.

● What’s a favorite memory with your parents from your childhood?

● What does a HyoJeong (filial piety) mean to you?

● What’s something from the reading that you’d like to practice in your daily life? How would you do that?

● What’s one challenge and one thing you’re grateful for during this quarantine time?